It seems that the “Windy City” has had a love affair with communism that goes back a long time. Originally, you can trace it back to 1860 when the Republican Party convention was held there–the convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln to run for president on the Republican ticket that year. There were several “Forty-Eighter” socialists, refugees from the 1848 socialist revolts in Europe, there that year for the convention and some of these socialists, such as Carl Schurz, actually helped to write the Republican Party platform in 1860.

In our book Red Republicans and Lincoln’s MarxistsWalter Kennedy and I have noted this. On page 61 we stated: “In chapter one we noted the close ties between radical European socialists/communists and Lincoln. In that chapter we pointed out that we are not suggesting that Lincoln was a communist, only that for some reason, these early American socialists/communists found the new Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln very attractive.” So Lincoln was nominated, ran, and won, with the help of these Forty-Eighter socialists/communists–and it started in Chicago. How fitting. You can check out information about Red Republicans and Lincoln’s Marxists on